RUTHFULLY YOURS

Legal immigration has historically been classically liberal and a great boon for the United States.

Immigrants often bring in energy and fresh ideas.

In the past, newcomers from around the world were eager for a second start in the United States. They nearly all worked hard, reminding American-born citizens that that they can never rest on their laurels.

Immigrants honed American competition and helped to keep the nation productive.

Immigrants were typically hyper-patriotic. They reminded complacent Americans how lucky they were to be born in the U.S.

No one knew better how uninviting were the alternatives abroad than did those who had been forced to live under fascism, communism, totalitarianism, tribalism, or endemic poverty and corruption. Most immigrants believed that they always had been Americans in spirit, just unfortunately born in the wrong country.

Immigrants characteristically had rejected their native cultures and were eager to adopt a new American identity. So they were not foolish enough to question what had made America attractive to them in the first place: constitutional government, the rule of law, personal freedom, free-market capitalism, and an independent judiciary and press.

Instead, immigrants often enriched that immutable Western core with diverse contributions of food, music, literature, and art.

Through integration and intermarriage immigrants quickly became part of the American dream. The path from Italian to Italian-American to American usually was completed in two generations.

What then were the ingredients of past successful American immigration policy?

WASHINGTON—Congressional Democrats are intensifying pressure on the Obama administration to hold Iran accountable for its testing of ballistic missiles.

Both supporters and opponents of the multinational nuclear accord with Iran say that to maintain U.S. credibility in enforcing the deal, the White House must move forward with sanctions on Iran after two missile tests in the fall.

The administration in late December told lawmakers it planned to impose new financial penalties on nearly a dozen companies and individuals for their alleged role in developing Iran’s ballistic missile program. It then reversed course, saying it needed more time for diplomatic work with the Iranian government, but it hasn’t given a timeline for when they would be imposed.

The delay has put some Democrats, particularly those who represent large Jewish constituencies and donors, in an uncomfortable position. Many such lawmakers agonized this summer over whether to support the nuclear deal, which was opposed by Israel, saying their backing was contingent on strict oversight of Iran’s behavior.

“They ought to impose sanctions because we have to show we take this seriously,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.), who backed the nuclear deal, said in a recent interview. “Iran is very destabilizing, very aggressive and very badly behaved and we have to do what we can to stop that.”

“We will issue those sanctions and those designations at the appropriate time. There’s no question about it,” Denis McDonough, the president’s chief of staff, said on Fox News Sunday.
The House is expected to vote Wednesday on GOP legislation ensuring that as the administration eases sanctions on Iran under the nuclear deal, it doesn’t lift sanctions against individuals involved in the country’s ballistic missiles program or terrorism. Many Democrats said they were reviewing the legislation.

Mr. Obama also faced resistance from his own party in November when nearly four dozen House Democrats defied his veto threat to support legislation to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees after the Islamic State attacks in Paris. That biil hasn’t been passed by the Senate.

The debate over the nuclear deal reached with Iran in July is likely to intensify as it is formally implemented and sanctions against Tehran are lifted. “I’m hopeful that Democrats, even those who voted to support the president’s deal, will recognize we’re in a bad place” under the agreement, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) said.

With the incidents of the past two months, ranging from San Bernardino to Merced to Rochester, we now know that we are essentially unprotected from terrorist attacks.

What San Bernardino amounted to is that government fumbled the ball and then refused to pick it up. Every single error made on the federal level concerning terror since the first inauguration of Barack Obama came to a head, from encouraging Muslim immigration to enabling terrorists to enter the country to crippling security investigations in the name of PC.

The federal government has unilaterally broken a basic element of the social contract — that the citizen will give up private use of violence and support the government in exchange for protection.

That protection is no longer forthcoming. Both the military and police have given up any pretense of attempting to control Islamic terrorism. Homeland Defense was founded to create a new basis for a public employee’s union. It fulfills that role admirably. It does nothing else. (Consider the Lutchman case in Rochester, N.Y. in which Emanuel Lutchman, a near-lunatic, was infatuated by ISIS websites but transparently unable to act upon them without help. He obtained this from government agents, who not only encouraged him, but in fact purchased the items he was going to use in the attack. That he was groomed as a trophy bust is difficult to deny.)

The IDE facility will produce some 190 million liters of water daily for the residents of southern California.

IDE Technologies dedicated the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere on Monday – a facility that will produce some 190 million liters of water daily for the residents of southern California.

Providing a new source of water in a state that has long suffered severe droughts, the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant will be quenching the thirst of roughly 10 percent of San Diego County, according to IDE. Employing advanced pretreatment and seawater reverse osmosis technologies, the plant is able to generate potable water of the highest quality while significantly reducing energy consumption, the company explained.

The desalination plant is the result of a 30-year water purchase agreement between the plant’s local developer and owner, Poseidon Water, and the San Diego County Water Authority, a joint statement said. The plant, which will be operated by IDE, has created some 2,500 jobs and generated about $350 million for the local economy, the statement added.

“Since the last major drought here a little over 20 years ago, the San Diego region has worked to conserve water as well as identify new water sources,” said California Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins.

Among the lies about himself Obama consistently repeats is that he was a constitutional law professor.

Lie one: Obama was never a professor; he was a lecturer. He did not have the qualifications to be a professor. Obama never published a single law paper. He was hired by the University of Chicago when they learned he had been given a book contract on race and law directly after graduating from Harvard. There was no book – just the contract, which he later reneged on. This is not the normal level of accomplishment for a University of Chicago professor or even lecturer.

Obama was not capable of writing, and eventually, after failing to deliver, he changed it to a memoir, which he also struggled with. Finally, he asked Bill Ayers to write his memoir for him, using tapes that Michelle dropped off at the Ayerses’.

Lie two: Obama did not specialize in the Constitution. Obama cared about and taught only one subject: race. One course was about race in the Constitution. It is on this flimsy basis that he attempts to pawn himself off as a constitutional scholar.

As the New York Times explains, Obama the lecturer taught three subjects only: “race, rights and gender.”

When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the first Democrat to hold that title in 20 years, assumed office two years ago this month, he and his fellow New York Democrat, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, appeared to be political brothers, both progressive former Clinton allies. Mr. Cuomo served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the 1990s; Mr. de Blasio was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager for her 2000 Senate bid.

Today, though, it’s clear the brothers that Messrs. Cuomo and de Blasio most closely resemble are Michael and Fredo Corleone in “The Godfather” movies. What started as friction grew into a rift and is now undisguised mutual loathing. One of Mr. Cuomo’s top political priorities seems to be using his superior political power to nettle, check and/or humiliate Mr. de Blasio at every opportunity. Nearly every day, the two men act out another scene in one of the most curious and entertaining political psychodramas of our time.

Terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have shown the danger of homegrown Islamist radicals. Naturally, then, progressives want to shame and punish the police who first warned about the threat.

That’s the essence of the settlement disclosed this week between New York City and the American Civil Liberties Union over the police department’s Muslim intelligence program. The deal confirms that the cops have been right all along in saying they did nothing wrong. But it nonetheless embarrasses the cops with a new civilian monitor and castigates them for being right about radicalization.

The settlement proposes changes to the Handschu Guidelines on surveillance that police have followed since they were laid out in a 1986 settlement of a federal lawsuit. In 2003 a judge modified the guidelines to give police the greater investigative freedom to meet the threat from Islamist terrorism.

As part of this effort, the police set out to identify places in New York where a terrorist might turn for shelter, a job, a meal, access to an Internet cafe and so on. Such intelligence might have come in handy, for example, if the Tsarnaev brothers had succeeded in their plan to make New York their next target after they exploded their pressure-cooker bombs at the 2013 Boston marathon.

Enter the Associated Press, which portrayed these tactics as illegal, followed by new Mayor Bill de Blasio, who campaigned by portraying police as the city’s enemy. Mr. de Blasio is close to the activists who sued and—unlike predecessor Mike Bloomberg—seems incapable of standing up for cops. Mr. de Blasio’s police commissioner, Bill Bratton, has already killed the Muslim mapping program.

Do the ‘zoo police’ under the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
really need body armor?

VA, EPA, FDA among those nabbing heavy armaments
Read ‘Golden Hammer’ story click here:http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jan/7/golden-hammer-feds-spending-millions-to-arm-agenci/#disqus_thread

Many federal agencies are now empowered with increasing police weaponry and technologies.

In our next study – coming soon – entitled OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – Arming of the Federal Agencies, we will quantify the purchases of guns, ammo and military-style equipment since 2006.

Today, Washington Times investigative reporter Kellan Howell uses OpenTheBooks data and awards the “Golden Hammer” award to 44 traditionally administrative federal agencies for spending $77.1 million on body armor since 2006.

According to our data at OpenTheBooks.com, $400 million across all federal agencies outside of the Department of Defense was spent on body armor which includes $330 million spent by the traditional law-enforcement agencies such as FBI, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals, and Homeland Security.

Read the Washington Times Golden Hammer story on federal agencies purchase of $400 million in body armor.

Here’s a snapshot of what was purchased by the administrative agencies as ‘body armor’:

1. Small Business Administration spent $13,119 on ‘ballistic vests’ in 2010.

2. Smithsonian Institution purchased $28,474 on body armor for its ‘zoo police and security officers’ in FY2012.

3. Over $200,000 by Environmental Protection Agency purchasing body armor during the Obama administration and only $30,000 during the previous three years.

4. Over $300,000 by Food and Drug Administration in ‘ballistic vests and carriers’ during FY2014.

5. $2 million spent by Veterans Administration on riot helmets, defender shields, body armor, Milo return fire cannon system, armored mobile shields, Kevlar blankets, tactical gear, tactical equipment for crowd control, and much more.

Read the Washington Times Golden Hammer story on federal agencies purchase of $400 million in body armor.

Stay tuned… 2016 is going to be a ground-breaking year.

President Obama spent the week defending his proposals to curb gun violence, culminating in a CNN town hall. Think about that. What else happened during the last few days that might warrant a presidential town hall?

Oh, nothing much:

Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran after the House of Saud executed a Shiite cleric, escalating sectarian warfare in the Middle East

The stock market tumbled on fears of a global economic slowdown

A U.S. soldier was killed in action in Afghanistan, where the Taliban controls more ground than at any time since 2001

Iran revealed the existence of an underground ballistic-missile launch site

North Korea detonated a nuclear device

A terrorist was foiled in Paris on the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre

To hear the Left tell it, the debate over mass Muslim immigration — especially from conflict zones — is a simple contest between compassionate tolerance and cowardly xenophobia. They claim their opponents are cowards because the percentage of refugees or immigrants who are terrorists is very small (your bathtub is more dangerous than a Muslim immigrant), and they’re xenophobes because they have no understanding or appreciation for the blessings and benefits of diversity. Conservatives are all fear and no heart.

According to the rules of this debate, there are but two kinds of Muslim immigrants — the tiny few terrorists and the overwhelmingly deserving, suffering majority. Question this narrative, or call attention to the vast cultural gaps between the refugees and the Western nations they’re fleeing to, and you’re a racist. After all, our cultural elite understands the Muslim world better than you do. They went to Harvard with Muslims, and the Muslims they know have great accents, cool customs, and — most importantly — tales of imperialist oppression that turn the leftist heart to mush. What’s not to love?

The recent events in Cologne and other German and Austrian cities represent a necessary, reality-based corrective to this absurd binary thinking. On New Year’s Eve, German women faced attacks from roaming gangs of North African and Middle Eastern immigrants, including asylum-seekers. According to German officials, “sexual crimes took place on a huge scale.” More than 100 women were victimized in a single evening, with up to 1,000 attackers involved.